The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 123

sion's greatest claim to fame. Bachtel and Mansfield zoom off to the "better" fire. At an intersection too busy to blow another light, they spot a car driven by former University of Akron football coach Gerry Faust. Bachtel toots the horn and waves. Faust smiles and waves back.

Mansfield and Bachtel both Channel 23 alumni know Akron and its people. They live here and like it. They don't see the Akron bureau as a steppingstone to Cleveland. At some stations, the Akron reporter wouldn't know Gerry Faust from Geraldine Ferraro. A few days earlier, for instance, Channels sent reporter Harry Boomer to a big news conference at the mayor's office involving accusations of domestic abuse against Akron Police Chief Ed Irvine.

About an hour into the session, Boomer asked, "Where is Mr. Mansfield and Channel 5 rival Barbara Meek confer at Irvine now? What position does he hold?" When Bachtel and Mansfield arrive at the second fire, at an unoccupied former Acme store on West Exchange Street, they encounter stiffer competition. It's Channel 5's Barbara Meek, a Copley High graduate who, like Bachtel and Mansfield, has spent most of her life in Akron. The rivals chat cordially as firemen deal with another small fire that is mostly out. Eventually the reporters and videographers surround Deputy Fire Chief Dan Eletich, who calls the fire arson and says he's glad his troops stopped it before it spread to the Five Points Station post office next door.

Television executives don't like to acknowledge this, but their news audience is shrinking faster than a wool DEPARTMEN MATT at the scene of a fire on West Market Street (left). sweater in a hot dryer. On an average night in February 1993, the collective late-evening newscasts on Cleveland TV were watched in 47 percent of the region's households. By February 1999, that figure had plunged to 41 percent a loss of 90,000 households. Where is everybody going? To cable programs.

To cyberspace. To sleep. To the same places that newspaper readers are going. From 1993 to the start of 1999, the Akron Beacon Journal's average daily circulation fell from 158,400 to 144,300. The Sunday circulation dropped from 226,500 to 206,000.

But those figures were almost encouraging by industry standards. According to one national newspaper organization, the percentage of Americans who regularly read a daily paper has fallen from 67 percent in 1977 to 50 percent today. What's an editor to do? Same thing a TV person's to do: Find some teammates. Media partnerships that would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago have sprung up all over the region. The Beacon Journal has a wide-ranging relationship with Channel 5 the Sun Newspapers are teamed up with Channel 3 the Cleveland Plain Dealer has worked with Cablevision and Channel 19 and there are so many TV-radio relationships you need a scorecard to keep them straight.

The trend began in many of the nation's larger cities about eight years ago and has met with widely varying degrees of success. The local pioneer in mixing media is Virgil Dominic, who, while general manager at WJW (Channel 8), aligned his station with a host of traditional rivals. Way back in 1990 at a time when Channel 8 was the uncontested news ratings champ Dominic arranged to simulcast his 6 p.m. newscast on Cleveland radio station WHK. He supplied the broadcast for free in exchange for a 50-50 split in advertising revenue.

A year later, he cut a similar deal with Continued on next page AKRON AKRON PARKING 1 VISITORS TV FOR NAUTICAL ONLY VEHICLES HORIZED TOWED AWAY Mark Williamson remembers his days at Akron's now-defunct WAKC. Journal At right, wwww.Ohio.com SUNDAY BEACON MAGAZINE June 13, 1999 PAGE 07.